


Underneath

by eponine119



Category: Lost
Genre: M/M, Miles & Juliet friendship, One-Sided Attraction, Season/Series 05, one-sided Miles/Sawyer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25509712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eponine119/pseuds/eponine119
Summary: Miles kind of thinks he loves Jim. Or maybe he's in love with him.
Relationships: James "Sawyer" Ford/Miles Straume
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	Underneath

Underneath   
by eponine119  
June 23, 2020

Miles kind of thinks he loves Jim. Or maybe he's in love with him. He's thought so for a while, but he's not really sure. What he really needs to do is talk to someone about it.

It makes him antsy. He can't stand still, rocking back and forth from his toes to his heels and trying to figure out where to put his hands without his formerly ever-present hoodie with its perfect center pocket. He can't sit still either, shaking his knee when he's on long jeep trips into the jungle. Jim puts a hand on his leg to stop it, out of pure frustration communicated only by a grunt. Miles wants to babble, but he bites his lip and watches Jim drive and feels the burning heat on his thigh, left behind in the impression of Jim's hand. 

It's not bad enough that Jim is his boss. Or that he thinks of Miles as a pal, if in fact he thinks of him at all, which Miles doubts. It's that Jim and Juliet are some kind of island power couple. That they paired off is so freakin' weird, but it works. They work. It's clear that they love each other – that they are in love with each other – even if they only got together because they were stranded together in the 1970s and that gave them enough room to breathe and figure it out. 

The part that really sucks is that the only person he can talk to about this is Juliet. 

Jim's his best friend, but obviously he can't talk to Jim about it. Or he could, but it'd be weird. 

Juliet's been in the same boat before. Jim's her best friend, too, but sometimes she needs to talk to someone else. Mostly about Jim. Miles knows a ton about Jim's bad habits – how he sucks at laundry, how he breaks the spines on new books and refuses to use a bookmark and leaves them lying around everywhere, how much Juliet hates beer and the word “ain't.” 

Now that he thinks about it, he knows all her secrets too, because Jim talks about her. It's not just the bad stuff – they're both loopy for each other and he hears all that too. Jim's just as likely to go on about how pretty her hair is as he is to go on about her tendency to leave her ponytail holders scattered throughout the house like it's a treasure hunt. 

So it's been on his mind for awhile when an evening comes that he and Juliet stay up late playing records in the living room while they pretend Jim isn't really snoring in the bedroom. 

“It's cute,” Juliet says, with a mischievous grin. “But sometimes I just want to put a pillow over his face.” 

“Huh,” says Miles. “Never figured you for the murdering type.” 

“I didn't say I'd do it.” she says, but she's smiling that closed mouth smile that only turns up at one corner and makes him wonder about her. “Even if he keeps me up at night with the sighing and the lip smacking. He's the noisiest man I've ever met.” 

He figures now's as good a time as any. “So how do you know if you love somebody?” he asks, and then presses on full-speed ahead without daring to look at her face. “Or if you're in love with them?” 

“Oh, you mean the difference?” 

“Or just, in general.” The Geronimo Jackson record sleeve in his hands is suddenly fascinating. Oh look, liner notes.

She puts her hand lightly on his arm and he accidentally looks up. Her blue eyes are so kind, and his heart kind of aches. Why didn't he just fall in love with her instead? It'd be so much easier, even if he didn't have a chance with either one of them. He looks away, hoping she's not going to ask him who it is, because he can not tell her. 

“Have you not been in love before?” she asks, like it's a perfectly normal thing for someone over the age of 13, like he's not in fact some kind of a freak. 

He shrugs and makes a face like he's not sure. “I mean, there's been... people.” That's true. He can fully differentiate this from a crush, for example. And from lust. He's been with girls before, and guys, they just never really got to the whole... being in love part. 

She nods seriously. “That's how it was with James,” she says. He tries not to show his surprise as she looks him over. “He said he'd never been in love before. And even if that's true, nobody ever, really... loved him back. I'm not sure --” She pauses and thinks about what she wants to say. “I think some people keep their feelings very deep inside. Hidden even from themselves. For whatever reason. And that's okay.” 

“He loves you,” Miles says loyally. 

“Oh, no question,” she agrees easily, though there's a certain look in her eyes that he finds interesting. Not that she thinks Jim's lying to her, but that she thinks he's lying to himself. 

“What about you?” he asks. 

“I love a lot of people. I fall in love at the drop of a hat, Miles,” she says, a little ruefully. “But I'm very good at keeping my feelings from showing on the outside. No matter how strong they are on the inside. Kind of the opposite of James. He won't let himself feel it, but it's written all over his face.” 

“Right,” Miles says, and he can't decide if this has taken a weird turn or not. But he goes with it. “So how did you know?” 

“I think I fell in love with him before we ever got here. To, you know.” They never talk specifically about this time as though it's not their own. “I think it was...you remember the arrows on the beach?” 

“Hard to forget.” He doesn't still have nightmares about fire shooting toward his head and the barbeque stench of death, or anything. 

“I'm not sure I knew until later,” she says. “But it was definitely before he asked me to stay.” 

“He asked you to stay?” How did he not know that? 

She nods. “So that was in love. Loving him, the verb, that's what's underneath. Because you can love other people you're not in love with. You can love your friends or your parents or your cat. It's the power underneath it, where I know him and he's inside my heart now. Romantic love just has the extra parts, the in love part, and the sex part.” 

Miles is thinking, hard. He's aware of her looking at him expectantly, waiting for his “I get it,” or more questions. He tries to process it all. 

“Did you love your mother, Miles?” she asks softly. 

“Don't get all Freud on me,” he warns. 

“No, that's not it,” she says. She's looking at him in a new way. “You _are_ like James. Neither of you had many people to love, when you were young. I know you lost your father.” 

“Never had him.” He's not going to think about the other weird shit in his life, namely that his mother and father are on this island right now and they have no idea. He's got enough problems. 

“Maybe you just never let yourself feel it,” she says. 

“He'd kill me if he knew you told me all this.” 

“He might not mind,” she says mildly. “You knew already. You're friends.” 

Miles realizes this must be as foreign to her as the idea of being in love is to him. Yet she seems to understand it all, and accept it. Where he still can't wrap his head around loving someone. “I hope that bastard understands how lucky he is.” 

“He does,” she says, and laughs. In it, he sees the insecurity underneath. Because the idea is so alien to her, she doesn't quite trust it. Even now. 

“So, your person, Miles,” she says, meeting his eyes. “Which is it? Love or in love?” 

He shrugs. “Maybe it doesn't matter.” 

“Why doesn't it matter?” she asks calmly. 

Because he's got you. His mouth is dry, with fear, because he wants to say it out loud, but he never will. 

“It's never... going to be returned,” he says. “Not in a being in love kind of way.” 

“That doesn't mean it's not real,” she says, and he can sense she knows exactly how he feels. How would she even know that? Who the hell wouldn't fall in love with her? he wonders. “And it's not wasted.” 

Miles nods. He feels both more and less confused than before. 

Jim pads out of the bedroom. They hadn't noticed when the snoring stopped, or maybe it only just did. His eyes are heavy and his hair is going every which way. “You guys talking about me?” he asks, kidding, on his way to the kitchen. 

“Yeah,” Juliet says, and when Miles echoes it softly a moment later, he feels her looking at him. 

Jim comes out of the kitchen. “You ever gonna come the hell to bed?” he asks, in a honey-smooth voice. He leans over Miles to give Juliet a soft, sweet kiss on the lips. 

“Soon,” she promises. 

“You want one too, Enos?” Jim jokes, looking at Miles. 

“I better go,” he says quickly. He gets to his feet. He wants to flee, feeling like a fool. 

“Didn't mean to break up the party,” Jim says. 

“Yes, you did,” Juliet replies, her eyes finding Miles's. Checking on him, concerned. 

“Thank you,” Miles says to her, for the conversation and for listening, and he bails out of there. He hears them start to talk behind him, before the door closes. He stops on the porch, suddenly breathing hard, listening to the soft murmur of their conversation that carries through the walls.

He loves Jim. So what. 

He looks up at the sky, at the constant stars, and then heads for home. 

End


End file.
